Ask an Ontario landlord how they screen and the first answer is almost always income. Three times the rent. The 30% rule. It feels like the responsible thing to do — the diligence a careful owner performs before handing over a set of keys.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission's position on that rule is one sentence long: it is illegal for housing providers to apply a rent-to-income ratio such as a 30% cut-off rule.
Not risky. Not a grey area. Illegal.
And it gets stranger. The regulation that permits tenant screening at all singles out income as the one tool you may not use on its own. Credit references, rental history and credit checks can be considered "alone or in any combination." Income cannot — unless something specific happened first. Four tools stand alone. The one everybody leads with doesn't.
This guide covers the five things you may ask for, the rule that's flatly prohibited, the subsection that decides whether your decision was lawful (it's about what you asked, not what you received), what to do when an applicant has no credit history, when you may ask for a guarantor, and why "our software applied the same criteria to everyone" is not the defence it's being sold as. It's a framework and a method, not legal advice.
One thing worth saying before any of it: the reason to get this right isn't the tribunal. As the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has put it, discrimination relating to a person's home is particularly egregious. This is somebody's home.
The Ontario Tenant Screening Compliance Checklist
The Human Rights Code permits five things you may ask a rental applicant — and one regulation controls exactly how you use them. This free checklist walks you through a screening process that holds up, including the income rule almost every Ontario landlord gets wrong.
Get Free PDF →The five things you may ask for — and the one that's different
Start with the architecture, because almost nobody does, and it takes two sentences.
Section 21(3) of Ontario's Human Rights Code permits landlords to use income information, credit checks, credit references, rental history, guarantees and similar business practices when selecting a tenant — but only in the manner prescribed. Ontario Regulation 290/98 prescribes the manner. That is the entire legal universe of tenant screening in this province: one enabling section, one regulation.
Here's what's on the list:
- Credit references
- Rental history
- A credit check (with the applicant's authorization)
- Income information
- A guarantee for the rent
- A deposit, in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act — which in Ontario means last month's rent, and nothing else
And here is the sentence that reframes everything: in the Commission's words, Regulation 290/98 permits no other inquiries. That list is not a set of examples you can build on. It's a ceiling.
The asymmetry
Now the part that is the whole piece. Under the regulation, credit references, rental history and credit checks may be considered "alone or in any combination," and you may select or refuse an applicant accordingly. Any one of them, on its own, is a complete and lawful basis for a decision.
Income is different, twice over. You may request income information only if you also request the others. And you may consider income only together with all the other information you obtained.
Four of the permitted tools stand on their own. The fifth — the one every landlord reaches for first — does not.
And then the regulation inverts itself
There is a subsection almost nobody in the landlord press covers, and it is the single most useful mechanical fact in Ontario screening law. If, after requesting everything the regulation lists, a landlord only obtains income information, that landlord may consider the income information alone and select or refuse accordingly.
Sit with what that means. Two landlords. Two applicants. Identical files — a pay stub and nothing else. Identical decisions.
Landlord A asked for credit references, rental history, consent to a credit check and income. Only the pay stub came back. Landlord A may decide on income alone. Lawful.
Landlord B asked only for pay stubs, received pay stubs, and decided on income alone. Landlord B has breached the regulation.
Same file. Same outcome. The only difference is what was asked for. Your compliance lives in your request, not in your folder.
Why the rule looks like this
It isn't arbitrary. It's a remedy. Ontario's Superior Court upheld a finding that a landlord's use of minimum income criteria as the sole basis for refusing applications amounted to indirect discrimination on a ground the Code protects. Section 21(3) and this regulation were the legislature's answer. The structure you're reading — four tools free, one tool fenced — is the shape of that answer.
One more structural point, and it ends a lot of arguments. The Residential Tenancies Act overrides other Acts that conflict with it — except the Code. The Code sits above the tenancy statute. Every sentence that begins "but the RTA lets me…" stops there.
The rule everyone uses is the one that's prohibited
The Commission's sentence bears repeating because it is unusually blunt for a policy document: it is illegal for housing providers to apply a rent-to-income ratio such as a 30% cut-off rule.
The ratio isn't only unlawful. It's unevidenced. The Commission's own research position is that there is no evidence that people from low-income or disadvantaged groups, when they spend more of their income on housing than a ratio would allow, are more likely to fall behind on rent. The rule that feels like prudence is a rule nobody has demonstrated works.
And look at the numbers in circulation. The Commission records that landlords commonly apply somewhere between 25% and 35%. Professional guidance published this year names 30–35%. "Three times the rent" is the version you'll hear at any landlord meetup. Every source names a different threshold — because there is no legal threshold to copy. The spread is the tell.
Where the line actually falls
This is the nuance that separates a useful article from a scare piece, and most coverage misses it in one direction or the other.
The Code does not require you to ignore whether someone can carry the rent. The Canadian Centre for Housing Rights is clear that refusing an applicant because their income is not much higher than the monthly rent — even if they work full-time — is not, by itself, a violation of the Human Rights Code, unless the refusal is tied to a protected ground.
So affordability is not off-limits. A fixed ratio applied as a gate is the violation. An individual assessment of a whole file is not. The difference is between reading everything you obtained about one person and running every application through a single number.
There is exactly one place the ratio is permitted, and it proves the rule. In rent-geared-to-income housing, income information alone and rent-to-income ratios may be used to determine eligibility, and the landlord is expressly not bound by the restrictions on income. The tool is lawful precisely where rent depends on income by design — and nowhere else.
The gap we're not going to paper over
Sources conflict on whether you may ask the source of an applicant's income, and you deserve to know that rather than be handed false confidence.
On one side, a Board of Inquiry held that the phrase "income information" is broad enough to cover the amount, source and steadiness of a prospective tenant's income — while holding, in the same breath, that being permitted to obtain income information does not permit a landlord to apply rent-to-income ratios. On the other, the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights states that landlords do not have the right to request the source of a prospective tenant's income, and warns that demanding an employment letter can itself become evidence if you then refuse someone who couldn't produce one.
Both are credible. We are not going to invent a resolution between them.
What we can say is where the safe ground is: assess whether the income is sufficient and steady, not where it comes from. Because on the refusal itself, the regulation is not ambiguous at all — nothing in it authorizes refusing anyone because of receipt of public assistance. If the money arrives from ODSP or Ontario Works and that's your reason, you're outside the law. If a screening decision of yours turns on the source question, that's a conversation for a lawyer.
Your side of it, in the Commission's own words
It would be easy to write this piece as though landlords have no legitimate interest here. The Commission itself doesn't do that.
Housing providers emphasized the importance of tenant screening based on non-discriminatory business practices since eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent take a number of months, during which time the landlord has to pay the mortgage, taxes, utilities and for repairs.
That's from the Commission's own consultation report, recording that the cost of arrears, hearings and damage can be significant. It is a real problem and it is on the record. On the same page, tenant advocates argued the opposite — that screening plays only a small role in the overall viability of a rental business.
Both positions are printed. Neither changes the rule. What the regulation asks of you is not that you stop caring whether the rent gets paid; it's that you stop deciding that question with one number.
Four traps — and one nobody can answer for you
Trap one: treating no history like bad history
The Commission's guidance is that a lack of rental or credit history should not be viewed negatively. Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre puts it better than any lawyer has: an absence of credit and landlord references is not the same as bad credit and bad landlord references.
A 2002 Board of Inquiry decision holds that treating the lack of a rental history the same way as a negative rental history is discrimination where that absence is connected to a protected ground — and it very often is. Someone who arrived in Canada last year has no Canadian credit file for reasons that have nothing to do with how they pay rent. So does someone rebuilding their own finances after a marriage ended.
The fix: absence is missing information, not adverse information. Then go and look properly at what you do have.
Trap two: the guarantor you only ask some people for
The regulation expressly permits requiring a guarantee for the rent. The Commission attaches the condition landlords miss: you may require one only if you have the same requirement for all tenants — not just for people identified by Code grounds, such as recent immigrants or people receiving social assistance. Requiring a guarantor merely because an applicant is on social assistance may violate the Code.
And there's a quieter version the Commission also flags: landlords who accept the guarantor, then apply a restrictive rent-to-income ratio to the guarantor. That's the prohibited practice, one step removed.
The fix: everyone or no one, written down before you advertise. (Worth knowing what you're asking of them, too — on a joint lease a guarantor is typically backing every tenant in the unit, not just the one who asked them.)
Trap three: the ad that screens for you
The Commission names the phrase directly: "suits a working person." Three words that signal to people on social assistance, or unable to work because of a disability, that they need not apply.
Nobody applies. So there's no refusal to defend, no awkward phone call, no paper trail. That's exactly what makes it effective — and exactly what makes it discrimination.
The same family: "adult building" — adult-only buildings are not permitted in Ontario outside narrow exceptions such as subsidized seniors' residences — and one-child-per-bedroom preferences, which are family-status discrimination unless a municipal occupancy standard genuinely bites. Auditing your ad copy is the cheapest item on this entire list.
Trap four: the criminal record check — and we can't resolve this one
Any source that gives you a confident one-word answer here is overselling.
The case for: record of offences is a protected ground in employment, not in housing. So declining someone over a criminal record does not, by itself, breach the Code.
The case against: the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights warns that requiring every applicant to produce a police check could amount to adverse effect discrimination — a neutral-looking rule with a discriminatory effect — because police contact correlates with protected grounds, including mental health disability.
And the problem almost nobody raises: a criminal record check isn't on the regulation's permitted list at all. The Commission says the regulation permits no other inquiries. On that reading, requiring one was never available to you in the first place.
Two defensible readings. Our conservative recommendation is not to require police checks as a matter of course. If your process depends on one, that's a question for a lawyer familiar with the Code — not for a blog.
The software now applies the rule for you
Screening changed shape in the last two years. Automated credit pulls, AI bank-statement analysis, document and identity verification, AI-conducted reference calls, tribunal-order cross-checks — a real industry, sold on speed, consistency and documentation. The efficiency is not imaginary.
Here's the problem, and it's the reason to read this section.
One 2026 platform describes screening that "evaluates against criteria — your specified income ratio, credit threshold, and rental history requirements." It then advises landlords to keep a record of "what criteria were applied (income ratio, credit threshold, etc.)," on the basis that a paper trail showing consistent, objective criteria applied uniformly is the standard defence.
Read that next to the Commission's sentence.
A 30% ratio applied by hand, on a bad Tuesday, to one applicant is a practice. The same ratio encoded in software is that practice applied to every applicant, provably, with a timestamp.
Check that your tool is even about Ontario
The same 2026 page, sold to Ontario landlords, reassures readers about their responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act and warns about what happens if a rejected applicant files a "Fair Housing complaint."
The Fair Housing Act is United States federal law. It governs nothing in Ontario.
The same page offers compliance with the "Canadian Human Rights Code" — a statute that does not exist. (There is a Canadian Human Rights Act; it does not govern Ontario residential tenancies.) It also describes applying British Columbia criteria within an Ontario workflow.
Ontario residential screening is the Ontario Human Rights Code and O. Reg. 290/98. That's it. If a tool, a template or a guide can't name the right statute, it cannot tell you what the statute requires — and this one is being sold to make the decision for you.
To be fair to that vendor, one thing on the page is exactly right, and it's the line to keep: automation "does not transfer legal liability. Landlords must ensure their screening criteria are lawful and that they maintain oversight." True. The principle survives the citation.
What the market is doing to the excuse
Vacancy has been rising across Ontario and asking rents have softened in several markets. That changes nothing whatsoever about the law — the Code never depended on vacancy.
But it does change the excuse. When forty people apply for one unit, a rigid ratio is a sorting device; it turns an unmanageable pile into a short list in about four minutes, and that convenience is why it spread. When four people apply, you're assessing individuals — which is what the Code asked for all along. The softening market removes the excuse, not the rule.
One more thing worth knowing if you operate in a licensed city: in Waterloo, the rental housing licensing by-law requires Class C units to comply with provincial law including the Ontario Human Rights Code — which makes your screening practice a licence condition, with its own enforcement route on top of the tribunal. We track which municipalities license what in our guide to Ontario municipal landlord licensing by city.
Practical takeaways
- Delete every rent-to-income ratio from your criteria, your form and your software — 30%, 35%, "three times the rent". The Commission calls the cut-off illegal, and there's no evidence behind it.
- Rewrite the application so it requests all of it — credit references, rental history, consent to a credit check and income. Requesting income on its own breaches the regulation, and the request is what you'll be judged on.
- Decide on the whole file. If you asked for everything and only income came back, income alone is permitted.
- Treat missing history as missing information. An absence of references is not a bad reference.
- Require a guarantor of everyone or no one — and never apply a ratio to the co-signor.
- Audit your ad copy today. "Suits a working person," "adult building," "one child per bedroom."
- Read what your screening software actually applies. Automation doesn't transfer liability, and a consistent unlawful criterion is a documented one.
Quick win: get written consent before any credit or reference check — that's a privacy obligation under PIPEDA, not an optional courtesy — and be ready to give Consumer Reporting Act disclosure where a credit report drove a refusal. Long game: a written, lawful, documented process you could hand to a stranger. Which, conveniently, is also the process that finds you reliable tenants, because it forces you to read a whole file instead of one number.
For the mechanics of assessing income once you've lawfully asked for it — particularly for applicants without pay stubs — see our guide to income verification for self-employed tenants. And when you get to the paperwork, the ontario standard lease is mandatory for most tenancies.
The Ontario Tenant Screening Compliance Checklist
Nineteen checks across four stages — before you advertise, what you may ask, how you decide, and who else is screening for you — plus a myth-vs-fact table you can keep beside the application form.
Get Free PDF →The bottom line
The regulation permits five things and, in the Commission's words, no other inquiries. Four of them stand alone. Income — the one every landlord reaches for first — does not, unless you asked for the rest and the rest never came.
The 30% rule that feels like diligence is the rule the Commission calls illegal, and it has no evidence behind it. The traps are ordinary: an absence of history read as a bad history, a guarantor asked of one applicant and not another, three words in an advertisement. And the newest one arrives dressed as the solution — software that applies your criteria to every applicant, consistently, and hands you a log that proves it. Consistency is not a defence if the criterion is unlawful.
None of this is exotic. It's a rental application form, asked properly, and a decision made on the whole file. An afternoon's work.
But the reason to do it isn't the tribunal, or the arithmetic of what a finding might cost. As the Tribunal has put it, discrimination relating to a person's home is particularly egregious — because it's a home. That's the whole argument, and it's enough.
Rules dated July 2026. This article summarises the Ontario Human Rights Code and O. Reg. 290/98 as they stood on the date of writing; the Commission's rental housing policy dates from 2009 and the regulation was last amended in 2018. Confirm the current text on e-Laws and the current policy with the Ontario Human Rights Commission before relying on any of it. Human rights questions are fact-specific and this is general information, not legal advice — if a screening decision is being challenged, get advice from a lawyer or paralegal.
Frequently asked questions
Can I require a tenant to earn three times the rent in Ontario?
No — and this surprises most landlords, because the rule is close to universal in practice. The Ontario Human Rights Commission's position is blunt: it is illegal for housing providers to apply a rent-to-income ratio such as a 30% cut-off rule. The one exception is rent-geared-to-income housing, where rent depends on income by design; there, income alone and rent-to-income ratios may be considered. Everywhere else a fixed ratio used as a gate is prohibited, and the Commission notes there is no evidence that people who spend more of their income on housing than a ratio allows are more likely to fall behind. That doesn't mean affordability is off-limits. You can look at income, and you can conclude an applicant can't carry the rent — what you can't do is run every application through one number and reject anyone who fails it. The difference is between assessing a person's whole file and applying a cut-off. One is permitted. The other is the practice the regulation was written to stop.
What can an Ontario landlord legally ask for on a rental application?
A short list, and it's exhaustive. Under Ontario Regulation 290/98 you may request rental history, credit references, and authorization to run a credit check; you may request income information — but only if you're also requesting the others; you may require a guarantee for the rent; and you may require a deposit in accordance with the Residential Tenancies Act, which in Ontario means last month's rent and nothing else. That's it. As the Commission puts it, Regulation 290/98 permits no other inquiries. It isn't a starting point you can build on — it's a ceiling. Anything that reveals a protected characteristic (where someone is from, their creed, whether they have children, their disability, whether their income is public assistance) sits outside the list and outside the law. Get written consent before running any credit check, and remember the Consumer Reporting Act has its own disclosure requirements if a credit report drives your decision.
Can I refuse a tenant who has no credit history?
Be careful here, because this is one of the most common ways well-meaning landlords end up in trouble. The Commission's guidance is that a lack of rental or credit history should not be viewed negatively, and Ontario's Human Rights Legal Support Centre puts the distinction better than anyone: an absence of credit and landlord references is not the same as bad credit and bad landlord references. A Board of Inquiry decision holds that treating the lack of a rental history the same way as a negative rental history is discrimination where that absence is connected to a protected ground — and it very often is. Someone who arrived in Canada last year has no Canadian credit file for reasons that have nothing to do with how they pay rent. So does someone re-establishing their own finances after leaving a marriage. Treat the gap as missing information rather than adverse information, then assess what you actually have.
Can I ask every applicant for a guarantor?
Yes — if you ask every applicant. The regulation expressly permits requiring a guarantee for the rent. The Commission's condition is where landlords slip: you may require one only if you have the same requirement for all tenants, not just for people identified by Code grounds such as recent immigrants or people receiving social assistance. Requiring a guarantor merely because an applicant is on social assistance may violate the Code. There's a second, quieter problem the Commission also flags: landlords who then apply restrictive rent-to-income ratios to the guarantor — which is the prohibited practice, one step removed. If a guarantor is part of your process, put it in writing before you advertise, apply it to everyone, and don't ratio the co-signor. It's worth knowing what you're asking of them, too: on a joint lease a guarantor is typically liable for every tenant, not just the one they think they're backing.
Can I run a criminal record check on a rental applicant in Ontario?
This is genuinely unsettled, and any source that gives you a confident one-word answer is overselling. The case for it: record of offences is a protected ground in employment, not in housing — so declining someone over a criminal record does not, by itself, breach the Code. The case against: the Canadian Centre for Housing Rights warns that requiring all applicants to produce a police check could amount to adverse effect discrimination, because police contact correlates with protected grounds such as mental health disability. And there's a further problem — a criminal record check isn't on the regulation's permitted list, and the Commission says the regulation permits no other inquiries. Two readings, both defensible. Our conservative recommendation is not to require police checks as a matter of course. If your process depends on one, that's a question for a lawyer familiar with the Code, not for an article.
Ask for all of it. Decide on all of it.
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Related resources
- Income Verification for Self-Employed Tenants: A Landlord's Guide — the natural sibling. This piece covers whether you may consider income; that one covers how to verify it once you've asked properly.
- Ontario Standard Lease — mandatory for most tenancies, and where the deposit rules live.
- Is My Lease Legal? Common Ontario Lease Mistakes That Void Your Terms — the clauses that don't survive contact with the RTA.
- Renting to Students in Waterloo, London & Kingston — what a guarantor is actually liable for on a joint lease.
- Ontario Municipal Landlord Licensing by City — where Code compliance is also a licence condition.
- 5 Things Your Landlord CAN'T Do in Ontario — the tenant-side mirror; useful for seeing your process from the other chair.
- Becoming a Landlord in Ontario: The Complete First-Timer's Guide — if this is your first tenancy, start here.
